It is surprising that this most beautiful, picturesque, and, to my fancy, sublime legend has been so seldom treated; and never, as it appears to me, in a manner worthy of its capabilities and its high significance. It is seldom that a whole story can be told by two figures, and these two figures placed in such grand and dramatic contrast;—Christ in his serene majesty and radiant with all the glory of beatitude, yet with an expression of gentle reproach; the apostle at his feet, arrested in his flight, amazed, and yet filled with a trembling joy; and for the background the wide Campagna or the towering walls of imperial Rome;—these are grand materials; but the pictures I have met with are all ineffective in conception. The best fall short of the sublime ideal; most of them are theatrical and commonplace. Raphael has interpreted it in a style rather too classical for the spirit of the legend; with great simplicity and dignity, but as a _fact_, rather than a vision conjured up by the stricken conscience and tenderness of the affectionate apostle. The small picture by Annibale Caracci in our National Gallery is a carefully finished academical study and nothing more, but may be referred to as a fair example of the usual mode of treatment. Peter returned to Rome, persisted in his appointed work, preaching and baptizing; was seized with St. Paul and thrown into the Mamertine dungeons under the Capitol. The two centurions who guarded them, Processus and Martinian, and many of the criminals confined in the same prison, were converted by the preaching of the apostle; and there being no water to baptize them, at the prayer of St. Peter a fountain sprang up from the stone floor; which may be seen at this day. ‘The Baptism of St. Processus and St. Martinian in the Dungeon,’ by Trevisani, is in the baptistery of St. Peter’s at Rome; they afterwards suffered for the faith, and were canonised. In the same church is the scene of their martyrdom by Valentino; they are seen bound and stretched on a hurdle, the head of one to the feet of the other, and thus beaten to death. The former picture—the Baptism—is commonplace; the latter, terrible for dark and effective expression; it is just one of those subjects in which the Caravaggio school delighted. * * * * *